"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

The following series of charts are from an in-depth study by Sean Trende designed to reassure conservatives that they can safely be racist assholes for many years to come, if they want to.

Trende’s three part analysis can be read in full: here, here, and here. But in case you don’t care that much, here is the quick summary:

“Racial Polarization Scenario”: Trende starts with a “baseline” scenario that he considers a “worst case” scenario for Republicans: minorities continue to reproduce, continue to vote, and continue to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Even in this situation, Trende shows that Republicans won’t become completely obsolete until 2044. WHEW!!!!!

“Modest Nonwhite Gains Scenario”: Trende then points out that if Republicans could simply do “some outreach” to minorities, they might pull off something amazing like getting 40% of Hispanics and Asians to vote for them! Never mind that this has never happened, ever. Never mind that the 40% number is completely arbitrary. It’s must be possible with “some outreach”, right? Of course, this aforementioned “outreach” would presumably not include publicizing 10-page long research essays focused entirely on why it’s OK for Republicans to not pay that much attention to minorities.

“Modest Nonwhite Gains / Slower Population Growth“: Then, Trende paints an even rosier picture: Suppose those pesky Hispanics stop reproducing so quickly! He makes this argument very plausible by writing the following very compelling sentence: “It seems at least somewhat inevitable that Hispanic population growth will slow somewhat.” Well, that kind of reasoning should clearly be built into a mathematical model, by making up completely arbitrary numbers that “seem fine”, and this third table is the result: Republicans just keep on winning elections and drive the Democrat party to extinction! Partayyy!!!!

“The Full Rubio”: This last scenario is really the “last resort” scenario for Trende and the Republicans. This is the “WHAT IF WE ACTUALLY PRETEND TO CARE ABOUT MINORITIES???” scenario. According to Trende, if Republicans back immigration reform and a “Hispanic friendly” candidate (whatever that means), and if Hispanics also stop reproducing so gosh-darn much, then Republicans will do even better. The best part of this graph is that Trende assumes that a full-on Latin-Loverboy Republican candidate will tick up Hispanic support for the Republican Party by 5% by 2048, whereas it will only depress White support fort he Republican Party by 3%. Where do these numbers come from? Absolutely nowhere!! And I will admit, they seem a little off. Is this underestimating the strength of xenophobia in the Republican base? Or, it is just assuming that most of today’s “Republican Base” might actually have died of old age by then? It’s difficult to tell.

“The evolution of white and nonwhite races”: To be fair, this graph was not actually included in Sean Trende’s article. But it seems appropriate here. This is a chart published in 1939 by a researcher obsessed with racial differences and racial purity. It just seemed very natural to include this graph in a discussion of a 10+ page scholarly article that is focused entirely on justifying why it’s actually just fine for white people to ignore non-white people, if they really want to. That seems like a perfectly legitimate research angle for a party that wants to be taken seriously.

Nothing screams “priorities” or “efficiency” to the American people than spending all of your energy and intellectual efforts on proving that it isn’t “that bad” to continue not caring about people who aren’t white.